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Jeremy Betts Apr 26
I am afraid of my rage
It's hard to gage
Even at this age
What will unlock the cage
Bringing the worst of me to the main stage
I am afraid

I am afraid of my depression
I've failed to get a grip on
This destructive emotion
An unmovable mountain
And the worst possible thing to become canon
I am afraid

I am afraid of my anxiety
Me against me
Me hating me personally
Confidence will atrophy
All I can do is hope no one can see
I am afraid

I am afraid of myself
I am afraid for myself
I am afraid I'm not good for my own health
I am afraid of me more than maybe anything else

©2024
selina Feb 28
i wanted to write like josé olivarez,
to love, plain and simple, and to let
the light in, shamelessly, for all to see

but she wanted a t.s. eliot, maybe a surrealist
portrait, or a picasso to my pissarro, and a tiptoe
around the elephants, for a look into me, endlessly

as if always in search of some deeper, divine meaning,
we parted our ways, but now i no longer feel like me
i have lost my rhythm, though i have not stopped reading

i fall into ignorance; i am called out for perfunctories; so
other than a casual fear of forevers, i now also know: my love
tastes like cheap prose, and an atrophied fondness of writing
one of my favorites from the more recent poems
Michael R Burch Apr 2020
Besieged
by Michael R. Burch

Life—the disintegration of the flesh
before the fitful elevation of the soul
upon improbable wings?

Life—it is all we know,
the travail one bright season brings ...

Now the fruit hangs,
impendent, pregnant with death,
as the hurricane builds and flings
its white columns and banners of snow

and the rout begins.

Keywords/Tags: Life, flesh, disintegration, atrophy, soul, elevation, wings, winter, bright season, fruit, pregnant, snow, rout, tempest, blizzard
Michael R Burch Mar 2020
The Shrinking Season
by Michael R. Burch

With every wearying year
the weight of the winter grows
and while the schoolgirl outgrows
her clothes,
the widow disappears
in hers.

Originally published by Angle. Keywords/Tags: schoolgirl, outgrows, clothes, widow, disappears, winter, time, shrinking, season, atrophy, emaciation, bone, loss
I feel                                                             ­                ...alone
        i am                                                               ­       ...trapped
I feel                                                             ­                ...rage
        i am                                                               ­       ...obsessed
I feel                                                             ­                ...pedantic
        i am                                                               ­       ...hollow
I feel                                                             ­                ...yearning
                                 ...for life.
Brandon Conway Aug 2018
You're laid out with a blank stare
with dreams of becoming a millionaire
on the couch where you're ensnared
stuck in what you call a nightmare

Sorry I have no sympathy
to your muscle atrophy
while you lay in envy
I just can not pity
so I invite you to the city
to come experience poetry
its what helps me feel less ******

No thanks, just let me wallow
while my soul feels so hollow
I will not, can not, follow
I have lost my bravado
go on you wild desperado
to your El Dorado

At least one of us has found gold.
Anjana Rao Dec 2015
They strung me up.
Not by the neck,
that would be
too quick.

No.
They intended
a slow torture for me,
bound one foot,
bound my arms.

I heard a voice:
Escape is possible
if you want it.


And I was alone.

At first I struggled.
Swayed back and forth
from the wind, and the weather and the
pain,
to no avail.

But eventually,
I learnt to just

Stop.

If this was my life,
So be it.
I was not going to provide
a show of my misery
to any God.

I saved my energy,
learnt to live with seeing the world
pass me by,
learnt to see things
from a different perspective.

Torture?
This was nice,
relaxing even,
I could hardly feel the pain,
could block it out
almost entirely.

Perhaps this is what I wanted
all along -
an eternal break.

Fool that I was,
I failed to realize
the torture was not physical
but mental.

Slowly I grew bored
in contemplation,
in limbo,
in apathy,
in atrophy.

I remembered the voice:
escape is possible,
I remembered
everything I wanted to do
everything I still yearned to do.

All the beauty and the goodness
and the possibilities of Life
made me ache,
and I could not block it out.

Suddenly I saw:
this was not torture
but a test.

My time of suspension is up,
These are but ropes,
not chains.

I know the way out,
and I am not afraid.

There is work to be done.
Inspired by the Hanged Man card in the Tarot of Ages Deck, some of the words I used to write this are in the tags
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